picking strings and words

A Catalog of Souls

His mouth opened one last time, his final agonal breath expelling in a soft moan for his fiancé to hear. She wept over him, her tears spilling on hospital linen. Too young. Both of them. And now he’s dead.

She wept for the remaining years of her life, religiously visiting the spot of land where her fiancé lay buried underneath.

Soon time had eaten her, her old bones withering to dust in the ground next to him.

He woke to the chill of cold air tingling inside his lungs. The man standing next to his bed smiled.

“What do you remember?” the man asked him.

“Her,” he said. “Where is she?”

The man straightened the white of his uniform with his hands. The gleam in the man’s eye held the weight of good news.

“She’ll be with you soon,” the man said. “Her name is also in the catalog.”

Behind the man was a glass wall, shielding the frigid, black space outside. Through the glass, several white objects, jagged in their structure, floated calmly through the black sea.

“Where do you want to meet her?” the man asked him.

“I remember dying,” he said. “She was there with me, there in the hospital — crying.”

“Ah, I see,” said the man. “That’s a popular choice. Close your eyes.”

He closed his eyes.

The bed hardened, changing. Soft tears dropped on his face. He opened his eyes and saw her leaning over him. Her eyes became saucers. Her mouth opened in surprise. The joy of seeing him alive.

“Hi,” he said.

Hands touching each other. Touching reality.

“Don’t ever do that again!” she cried, hugging him tight.

He frowned. “What did I do?”

“You died,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed. “But I came back. We came back. How is that possible?”

They cried together, forehead to forehead, and then she said, “Does it matter?”

A stranger burst into the hospital room, a knife in his hand.

“This is wrong!” the stranger shouted. “This. All of this. Unending. They don’t have the right!”

He raised the knife over the couple.

“Hold me tight,” she said to her eternal love. “They’ll bring us back.”